Mr. Clarinet

"And you're what—doing them a favor, teaching them how to hold a knife and fork at some pedophile's dinner table? Give me a motherfucking break, Eloise!" Max shouted. "Why'd you do it, Eloise? I saw those tapes. I saw what happened to you."

"You saw, but you didn't see," she countered, boring into Max with hard eyes. "You should look again."

"Why don't you just fill me in on what I'm missing?"

"Maurice loves me."

"Bull-shit!" Max spat.

"Why?" she countered calmly. "What did you expect to find? A victim? A helpless, weeping adult-child? Someone right out of your training manual?" She was defiant and angry, her voice falling just outside a shout. Yet, in spite of this, her delivery was completely devoid of passion, as if she had been rehearsing this speech all her life and the words had lost their meaning to her, become a row of audio dots she had to follow until they stopped.

"It's easy for you to paint us all as innocent, vulnerable little victims, but we're not all the same. Some of us beat the system. Some of us come out on top."

"You call this coming out on top?" Max threw his hands around the room. "You're gonna die and you're gonna die bad."

"No one has ever treated me as well as him. Ever. In my whole life. I have no regrets. If I could change anything, I really wouldn't," she said calmly.

"Tell me about Maurice. How did he steal you? What was his technique?"

"He didn't 'steal me,'" she said impatiently. "He rescued me."

"Whatever." Max sighed. "Just tell me how he did it."

"The first thing I remember about him was his camera—he had a Super 8 then. It covered half his face. I used to see him in the mornings. Me and my friends would wave to him. He'd talk to us, give us things—candy, these little wire figurines he made of us. He paid me the most attention. He made me laugh. My friends were so jealous." Eloise smiled. "One day he asked me if I wanted to go away with him—go on a trip to a magical place. I said yes. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting next to him in a car. Best decision I ever made."

Max tried to swallow but his mouth was arid. She was right. She wasn't what he was expecting. He knew all about Stockholm syndrome, where kidnap victims fall in love with their captors, but he'd never encountered that in a child-abuse case before.

He was deeply confused—and lost and horrified, and the worst part was he couldn't help himself from showing it, letting her see into him, letting her have the edge on him, the authority.

"But—what about your family?"

She let out a sour laugh, her face rigid, her eyes cold and fixed.

"My family? You mean my 'apple-pie Mom and Dad,' like you have in America? Is that what you think when you speak of my 'family'?"

Max looked at her blankly.

"Well, it wasn't like that, let me tell you. The little I can remember I'd give anything to forget. Eight to a tiny one-room house, so poor the only thing I had to eat was dirt cake. Do you know what dirt cake is? It's a little cornmeal and a lot of dirt mixed together with sewer water and left outside to dry into a cake. That's what I ate every day."

She stopped and looked at him defiantly, goading him to come back at her with something bigger, to try and net her with some homespun morality.

When she saw he wasn't going there, something in her changed and became unsure. Then she breathed deeply through her nose, held in the air, closed her eyes, and lowered her head.

She held her breath for well over a minute, her eyeballs squirming back and forth behind her eyelids, her fingers screwing up the corners of her handkerchief, and her lips moving fast but soundlessly, either in prayer or conflict with her conscience. Then, one by one, the neurotic motions timed out: she put the handkerchief down on her lap and rested her hands, palms down. Her lips froze and her eyes rolled to a stop.

Finally, she exhaled through her mouth, opened her eyes, and addressed Max.

"I'll tell you everything you need to know. I'll tell you where we keep the children and who we sell them to. I'll tell you who is involved, and who we work for."

"Who you work for?"

She opened her eyes and met his.

"You didn't think Maurice ran this all by himself, did you?" She laughed.

Paul came back in.

"Maurice is many things, but clever isn't one of them." She giggled fondly, and then almost immediately flipped into business mode. "I'll tell you absolutely everything—but on one condition."

"Try me," Max said.

"You let Maurice go."

"What? Absolutely no fucking way!"

"You let Maurice go and I'll tell you. He was just a cog in a very big wheel. We both were. If you don't let him go, I won't talk. You might as well turn your guns on us now."

"Done," Paul suddenly interrupted, making Eloise start. "As long as we verify whatever information you give us, I'll let him go."

"Give me your word," Eloise said.

"I give you my word."

Eloise bowed her head solemnly to indicate they had a deal.